5 quotes PR practitioners should always keep in mind

“Your smile is your logo, your personality is your business card, how you leave others feeling after an experience with you is your trademark.” – Jay Danzie

The title public relations itself indicates that this industry involves a lot of relating with public, and is about building and maintaining these relationships. If you know the right people and they like you, that’s always going to beneficial to you. Quite frankly, not many people would go out of their way to get in touch with another contact or lend a helping hand where needed if they don’t like you ­– plain and simple. However, if you are always friendly, courteous, and give your service with a smile and a little light-heartedness, people will go above and beyond to help you out, and will be sure to recommend your welcoming service to others. Leave a lasting impression so the next time you call up and say, “Hey, it’s me”, that person will be glad to hear from you. Contrary to popular belief, the nice guy finishes first!

“If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs

You’ve probably seen it happen – a product that no one has heard of one day becomes the hottest thing to own the next. To the public, it may appear as though the product was an overnight success. However you, the PR guru behind the product, knows the gruelling hours of work you put into getting it to this position. Don’t give up if it’s taking a while to get your client exposure. Most of the businesses, people and products everyone knows about probably had a great PR team behind them putting lots of blood, sweat and tears into getting them to where they are today.

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston S. Churchill

No matter how good the service you offer is and how much exposure you’re getting them, you’re inevitably going to get clients who aren’t happy with what you’re doing. However, what goes up must come down, and vice versa. You’ll have moments where you’re hitting your work out of the ball park and getting great responses, and other times you’ll go through a rough patch with clients and not having luck with gaining exposure. Regardless, always approach your work with courage and confidence – every success should be a reason to drive you forward and so too should every perceived “failure”. (I say perceived because there really is no such thing as failure as I prefer to see setbacks as learning curves!). To elaborate on this point, self-made billionaire Bill Gates said that, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

Try and be a little creative in your approach. Imagine you are on the other side of your pitch – you are the journalist, the investor, the audience. What’s going to stand out to you about the client, the business or product? Probably not a black and white description of them, that’s for sure. Add a splash of creativity, a few interesting or quirky facts or something that you can’t find out about them on google perhaps, that is unique to your pitch. On the other hand, you could get your creative juices flowing into your press kit, where you showcase a bunch of great goodies that wow the people you need to impress to gain exposure about your client. This is just as much a vital element in encouraging them to write about it! Let the internet be your friend. It’s filled with a plethora of great ideas to help you add a creative flair to your press kit.

“My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to do this today.’” – Richard Branson

Could this mindset be the determining factor behind the success of one of the world’s most renowned businessmen, Richard Branson? Perhaps so! It’s so important to approach your work with an element of positivity and to love what you do (or at least convince yourself that you do), so that you’re determined to be great at it. PR is such an enthralling and diverse industry. There’s always something new to do, new people to meet and with the rise of new technology and media platforms, the whole face of the industry is being reinvigorated and will continue to be over the coming years. Having a good attitude will not only genuinely make you feel better at work especially when you have to go over some of the more tedious tasks, but your great attitude will most definitely reflect and shine through your performance (and could get you some extra brownie points!).